Unimaginable audacity: the robbery that drove Brazil crazy

The footage released by authorities shows the two men dragging a canvas bag containing the works away from the exhibition. After they left the getaway vehicle, one of the suspects was seen carrying a number of canvases in his arms before placing them on the side of the road and fleeing, while another video shows a suspect crossing the road holding artwork above his head. The thieves left the same way they entered and fled towards the nearest metro station.

The Sao Paulo police announced that they located the “getaway vehicle” and arrested one man after he was identified through investigative work and analysis of security cameras, with the help of the facial recognition system. Police are still looking for another suspect and the artwork that has yet to be found. The stolen items were displayed in a joint exhibition with the Museum of Modern Art of Sao Paulo called “A Number for the Museum”. Besides Matisse’s engravings, from his book “Jazz” from 1947, works by the Brazilian modernist painter Candido Fortineri were also stolen.

The municipality of São Paulo stated that the value of the works is cultural, historical and artistic, and therefore they are “expensive” from an economic point of view. Art experts have stated that it is likely that the works will not enter the commercial market due to their rarity and the high attention to theft. This is not the first time that “jazz” works have been stolen; According to reports in Brazil, they were previously taken between 2004 and 2006 and replaced with imitations, until they were found by the Argentine police and returned to the library in 2015. The current robbery takes place only two months after the theft of jewels from the Louvre gallery in Paris.